Oliver Wasow
Terminal Lucidity
April 12 - May 11, 2024
Reception: Friday, April 12, 6 to 8 pm
Gallery hours Thursday–Saturday 12-6 pm
Door/Elevator buzzer #610
Theodore is pleased to present an exhibition of a large group of conjured landscapes by Oliver Wasow.
The phenomenon of terminal lucidity occurs in the period immediately preceding death, when the dying person
experiences what has been described as a kind of clarity and euphoria. In the face of death’s terror, nature is
providing a sublime exit strategy, a dose of beauty and perhaps even hope as life fades to black.
The work in this exhibition hopes to function in a similar way, finding beauty in the dystopian collapse of our planet’s ecosystem while perhaps reminding us that this is a planet worth saving. These pictures depict the ‘golden hour” of twilight, that magical time before darkness when the truth is partly visible but is often hallucinatory and hard to discern. Terminal Lucidity for a planet on the brink.
These pictures, made in part by utilizing recent developments in AI-Assisted imaging software, envision a world
scarred over by the overuse of natural resources and information technologies. While not ignoring the potential
ethical problems posed by AI, Wasow is drawn to the ways in which the medium builds on the already democratic
nature of photography. More importantly, the use of the tool is a continuation of his on-going interest in post
production processes that extend the aesthetic boundaries of lens-based photography. AI lends itself well to creating the kinds of images that synthesize a variety of seemingly contradictory forces: nature and culture, the past and the future, painting and photography, and the opposition that may define art-making itself, fiction and reality.
On Dec. 6th, 2023 I'll be in discussion with Gregory Eddi Jones at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art as part of their on-going New Histories Series
Published by Saint Lucy Books, Friends, Enemies and Strangers is available for purchase here:
https://saint-lucy.com/shop/friends-enemies-and-strangers/
The exhibition is a survey of works made between 1983 and 2017
Curated by David C. Terry
C24 Gallery in partnership with The New York Foundation for the Arts presents Facial Profiling, a multimedia exhibition curated by David C. Terry, director and curator of Grants and Exhibitions at NYFA. Facial Profiling investigates the concepts of the observed self with over 50 new works by seven NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellows: Samira Abbassy, Kwesi Abbensetts, Geoffrey Chadsey, Sean Fader, Michael Ferris, Jr., Kymia Nawabi, and Oliver Wasow. Facial Profiling will be on view July 20 - September 30, 2017 with an opening reception on Thursday July 20 from 6:30pm - 8:30pm at C24 Gallery.
Unified through the explorations of the perceived and projected self, the participating artists examine the notions and visual representation of identity as formed and influenced by place, culture, gender, and conformity. The resulting artworks ask the viewer to question how we interpret portraiture.
Referential to symbols and icons of ancient civilizations, juxtaposed to effigies of contemporary society, the works of Samira Abbassy, Michael Ferris Jr. and Kymia Nawabi uniquely address representation and cultural identity. Each artist looks to cultural heritage to investigate how the relationship to traditions and collective experiences form cultural identity.
Kwesi Abbensetts and Sean Fader's photographs share an exploration in the conscious presentation of persona. Technology and social media are dominant tools in contemporary society that allow people to control or change their character, or identity as presented to or perceived by others. These digital tools act as a mask to reality.
Oliver Wasow and Geoffrey Chadsey's imaginative portraits are influenced by imagery from the public collective, reworked and reimagined. Wasow's portraits of contemporary political figures project a conceptualized representation, imprinted by opinion, of the interior world of powerful figures, illustrated by the atmosphere of the portrait. Chadesy's drawings are collected from random social websites. The figures are transformed by materialized projections of fantasy into a merging of identities.
On June 12th, 2017 I'll be giving a Lecture at the Otis School of Art and Design.
The Lecture, titled Artist Unknown", will be an overview of the various projects I've been involved with in my thirty-plus years in the art world working as a photographer, curator and teacher. Among the things I'll discuss will be my complicated relationship with new technologies, social media, authorship, ownership, irony, and my on-going, unsatisfied search for creative conviction.
Link to details here: http://www.otis.edu/calendar/la-residency-lecture-artist-unknown
Over the past few months, I’ve been working on a series of portraits of members of the Trump administration. It’s an on-going project I call The Rogues Gallery. Monday, May Day, 2017, I'm going to open a one week show of prints from this series at Steven Harvey Fine Arts Project, 208 Forsyth Street in New York City.
Signed prints are being sold, cheap, with all proceeds going to benefit the ACLU.
I’m currently involved with the “Seeing Science” on-line project, organized by the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. SEEING SCIENCE: Photography, Science and Visual Culture is a year-long project whose goal is to explore: the central role photographic images play in defining, shaping, promoting, and furthering science and how photographic images made in and about the sciences impact public opinion, policy and funding, science education, as well as visual and popular culture.
My contribution to the project is called “Picturing Science”. Every week, I contribute a group of thematically grouped images to the site. The images are culled from diverse online sources and are presented and transformed by their juxtaposition with each other—teasing out new meanings and contexts. Each grouping focuses on one theme or type of photographic image in order to reveal similarities among and variations between them. What results is a new understanding of how science related images are constructed, used, and perceived.
The project can be seen here: http://seeingscience.umbc.edu/picturing-science/
I recently sat down for an interview about my work with the artist, critic and teacher Mark Alice Durant.
It can be seen here on his blog St. Lucy:
https://saint-lucy.com/conversations/oliver-wasow-2/
New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased a series of photographs produced between 1984-2008